


No more agonising

by peregrinning



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-07 17:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16858546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peregrinning/pseuds/peregrinning
Summary: Cormoran has realised how he feels about Robin but can't decide how to go about the next steps. Luckily for him, Robin's both clever and more importantly, decisive.





	No more agonising

Cormoran sat at his desk, moodily smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke out of the open window. A client had cancelled their session, so he was using the unexpected break to have a cup of tea, a smoke and to return to what was now apparently his favourite hobby: pondering Robin.

Lovely Robin, so kind, so clever, warm, efficient, gracious...beautiful. He’d lately come to the staggering realisation that for the first time since Charlotte, a voice in the back of his brain was starting to use the word love. In spite of himself, he’d started to think _I love her_ more and more often. When her eyes gleamed as she came up with a new strategy for a case, when she brought him a fresh mug of tea, when she regaled Nick and Ilsa with tales of client confrontations over curries on a Saturday night. And he’d started to imagine what a life with her might look like. A long life together, as his treacherous thoughts supplied him with imagined Sunday morning sleep-ins, Christmases, holidays overseas, snuggling on the sofa in front of an interesting new TV show…

It was his own stupid fault, he thought, tapping ashes off the end of his cigarette. He was the one who told himself not to use the word love unless he could imagine making a life with the woman in question. In this case, it had come about backwards...he couldn’t help but love Robin as she was now, for who she was now. And having once thought the word love, images from a potential life with her had come at him fast and hard, submerging him in a tidal wave of possibilities that seemed only just out of reach.

He stubbed the cigarette out. Yes, he thought, he loved her. And finally he had come to accept that he had to at least attempt to let her know how he felt, to try to be with her. Much as he’d worried that it might change their professional relationship, so too would his ridiculous pining and many longing looks that he thought she might have taken notice of. And she hadn’t tried to keep him at a distance, in fact he thought she was enjoying the increasing closeness of their friendship, so he had hopes that she would welcome his affections.

But how to tell her? Normally he enjoyed a drink at the pub as a first date; it was an easy environment to loosen up and have a nice chat in, it wasn’t too formal, there was often music, but it wouldn’t be obnoxiously loud the way it would be in a nightclub. But he and Robin went out for drinks at the Tottenham all the time! He couldn’t very well invite her there and have her realise that he meant it was a signal that he wanted to start a relationship.

He could ask her out for a nice dinner (a cheap dinner would not do, as they often went out for one of those after a long day). But that seemed like perhaps it was going too far in the other direction from a drink at the pub, too extravagant and too formal. A movie? It certainly had the advantage of clearly being a date, given its status on the societal list of acceptable first-date activities, but it seemed so juvenile and meaningless. Robin deserved better.

Strike stood and wrestled the sticky window down, closing off the rapidly-cooling air coming in. As he sat back down, his brain helpfully suggested another way he could make his feelings known. _You don’t need to take her on a first date, you already know her so well_ , said a sly voice. _Just lean down and kiss her, she won’t push you away._ But that’s not the right way to do it, he thought stubbornly.

A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts, before Robin, not waiting for a reply, poked her head around the door.

“Mr Thornton’s here now,” she announced. Then in a lower voice, she continued “I got a mailer recently from an Italian restaurant on Old Compton. New promotion, two pastas for £22 on Tuesdays. Are you up for it? It’ll be late by the time he’s done.”

“What part of “I’m on a diet” includes large plates of pasta?” he asked teasingly.

“There’s ones without cream-based sauces,” she retorted.

“Well, if you insist,” he replied. She smiled triumphantly, before opening the door the rest of the way and showing Mr Thornton in.

 

Later that evening, as he finished up his excellent bolognese (congratulating himself on refusing extra parmesan from the waiter), Strike could not help but notice once again how beautiful Robin looked under the restaurant lights, gleaming off her golden head.

“Hold on, you’ve got some sauce on your cheek,” she said. He went to pick his serviette up off his lap, but before he could complete the movement, Robin was reaching across the table with her own serviette, wiping the sauce gently off his cheek. Her blue eyes caught his, and his breath faltered at the warmth in her gaze.

She flushed a little as she dropped her hand back down. “Sorry,” she said, “I know you could have gotten it yourself.”

“It’s okay,” he replied, strangely buoyed by her blush. “Not your fault I’m a messy eater. Shall we go?”

She nodded her acquiescence and they stood up and went over to the till to pay. It had become their custom that Strike would pay and Robin would give him some cash to approximately half the bill, a method that avoided arguments.

They walked out into the night air and Strike waited patiently while she arranged her scarf against the chill of the late-autumn evening. While she did this, he tried to think of a way to say goodnight that wouldn’t sound awkward and unnatural to his own ears. He found it so hard to say goodbye to her after they’d been out to the pub or dinner, probably because what he really wanted to say were things like “don’t go”, “come home with me”, or “I wish this evening didn’t have to end”.

She was done. He was about to say goodnight, but stopped when he saw a strange look of her face, simultaneously afraid and very determined. “Robin?” he said, and then suddenly she was pulling on the lapels of his coat, tugging him down to her and then she was kissing him.

Robin was kissing him. Her lips were soft, still tasting a bit like spaghetti al limone and white wine. His arms quickly encircled her, pulling her closer while her hands stroked along his jawline, around to the back of his neck.

As her mouth softened under his, he had to make a concerted effort to remember that they were, in fact, still standing on the street just outside the large front windows of the restaurant. Before he could totally forget himself, he gently broke away from the kiss, smiling down at Robin to show that it hadn’t been unwelcome.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” he said. A tiny furrow appeared in her brow, but before it could become an actual frown he explained, “because I’ve been agonising for so long whether I should just do that or if I should ask you on a date, and how you would understand that it _was_ a date and not just our usual.”

She laughed lightly at him. “You’d have agonised for months and months more. I didn’t want to wait that long!”

“You’re too clever for your own good,” he told her admiringly.

“Here, walk with me,” she said, curling her fingers around his arm. They walked; perhaps it was easier for her to say whatever she might want to say next if they were no longer standing still, facing one another. “Please, no more agonising, Cormoran. I promise you, I want everything you want. If you want to ask something, just ask. If you want to do something, just do it.” A frisson of desire ran down his spine at her last words, but he didn’t say anything, just kept going. Whether he was walking her back to his flat or on to the Tube station, he didn’t know, and found he didn’t mind. Myriad joyous possibilities were open to him now, and whether he experienced them tonight or in the future did not matter, so giddy was he with the knowledge that he and Robin were at last on the same page.

London had never looked so beautiful as she did this night. This city that had seen him broken down and broken-hearted had brought him the incredible woman at his side, had finally given him this chance at happiness. Now both city and woman humbled him in their beauty, strength, and tenacity. Strike remembered his walk through the city with his camp bed, several years ago now, and how he had taken solace in London’s vast, anonymous darkness. Now that darkness seemed full of possibility and London even more loveable, as he pulled Robin closer to him and they walked on through the indigo night.

**Author's Note:**

> Final paragraph of this work inspired by JKR's beautiful writing in Cuckoo's Calling:  
> "It was nearly eight before he returned to the office. This was the hour when he found London most loveable; the working day over, her pub windows were warm and jewel-like, her streets thrummed with life, and the indefatigable permanence of her aged buildings, softened by the street lights, became strangely reassuring. We have seen plenty like you, they seemed to murmur soothingly, as he limped along Oxford Street carrying a boxed-up camp bed. Seven and a half million hearts were beating in close proximity in this heaving old city, and many, after all, would be aching far worse than his. Walking wearily past closing shops, while the heavens turned indigo above him, Strike found solace in vastness and anonymity."


End file.
